In a solicitation for proposals, the agency said it would fund one or two 3-year studies of behavior change's role in preventing brain injury. In addition, it divulged separate plans to fund a pilot test of a national concussion surveillance system for which the CDC has requested Congressional funding.

The research would focus on effecting behavioral and social change in youth sports, encouraging more young athletes, parents, coaches, and others to take head trauma more seriously. The funding could be used to develop and pilot test a new intervention, or to evaluate an existing one, the CDC said.

"This funding opportunity announcement acknowledges that we need to build a culture in sports where athletes, parents, coaches, sports officials, and athletic trainers take steps to reduce the likelihood that athletes experience concussions," according to the project description, "and encourage athletes to recognize and report concussion symptoms so that athletes can obtain appropriate care and take sufficient time to recover."

The agency emphasized that the interventions must "go beyond education and communication messaging." They should assess the effects of interventions such as supervision/coaching strategies, and changing social norms or rule/policy changes. Chief aims would either be to prevent concussions from occurring in the first place, or to reduce the impact of concussions once they occur.

The CDC Injury Center's preferred target population would be a racially/ethnically and socio-economically diverse group of athletes aged 13 and younger, including some living in rural areas, who participate in youth sports programs. Applications are due Feb. 16, 2017.

The study would join other ongoing assessments of sports concussion organized and/or funded by CDC, including a 3-year evaluation of CDC's Heads Up to Youth Sports campaign, a study of the effectiveness of content and messaging within the entire Heads Up platform, and an examination of the impact different tackling techniques have on head injury in youth football (using innovative mouthguards to collect data).

“It is important that research be expanded to allow for multiple investigations of different preventive interventions in multiple settings,” a CDC spokeswoman wrote MedPage Today. “There are a variety of different structures to youth sports organizations.”

The project announced Tuesday also follows several awarded to examine how to change concussion-reporting behavior, which were recently funded by the Department of Defense and the National Collegiate Athletic Association via the MIND Matters initiative.

CDC is following suggestions to tackle this problem: “The initial impetus behind the recently-announced study is an Institute of Medicine report that called on CDC and other groups to seek ways in which to change the culture of youth sports with regard to preventing concussion and increasing reporting of concussion,” the spokeswoman wrote.

The IOM report also spurred CDC’s plans to test out the national surveillance system, she wrote, despite no promises of Congressional funding.

Nevertheless, "CDC is also investing in conducting a pilot test of the National Concussion Surveillance System to track and monitor how many Americans experience a concussion each year and describe the circumstances surrounding these injuries," according to the solicitation for proposals.

“CDC has allocated existing funds sufficient to support a year-long pilot,” the CDC spokeswoman wrote. “Our aim with the Pilot is not just to inform an ongoing surveillance system but has been designed to obtain useful information on the incidence of TBI (including youth sports/rec [recreational] concussion) and answer other key questions about TBI in the U.S.”

“With additional funding (requested in the FY 2017 President’s Budget),” according to the solicitation, “this system could provide the first national estimates of the number of sports-related concussions among youths that occur both in and outside of organized sports, and help monitor trends to understand whether the number of concussions is increasing or decreasing.”

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